Have you ever been out of the country on vacation when you needed to call home to check in with family and friends, and then realized the call cost you as much as a dinner out or a short flight to New York?

With Canadian mobile telecom carriers charging as much as $3 per minute to make calls out of vacation spots such as Mexico, you can easily rack up a hefty bill.

Most hotels today, even in the least-affluent of the islands in the Caribbean, offer free Wi-Fi access that can be used with a smart phone, equipped with an Internet calling application such as Skype (skype.com), to save you hundreds of dollars while travelling.

The Skype service lets you make calls over the Internet. It is better known for its computer-to-computer voice and video calls, but people are now starting to discover the freedom of using a mobile phone and a smart-phone app to make the call.

The Skype app is free to download and runs on the iPhone and Android phones. The Skype app for Blackberries is currently only available for U.S. Verizon customers. A release date for support in Canada is yet to be confirmed.

Although it’s free to call anyone on the Skype service (Skype-to-Skype), there are low-cost plans that let you call any mobile phone or landline number for as little as $3 per month for unlimited talk time anywhere in Canada and the U.S.

That works out to $36 per year, which should pay for itself with a single call from any vacation spot in the world.

There are also no strings or contracts attached to the service. You can also pay as little as 2.8 cents per minute on a pre-paid plan or pay on a monthly basis.

Skype also offers a cost-effective out-of-country SMS messaging service for about 14 cents per message from Mexico to any mobile phone in Canada and the U.S., compared to 75 cents for traditional carriers.

Critics may argue the quality of voice calls over the Internet is subpar, but my experience over the past few years has seen Skype’s quality improve and come close to that provided by telecom carrier networks.

You can also us Skype on a mobile phone’s 3G network if no Wi-Fi exists where you are.

This lets you use it for long-distance calls, through your phone’s data plan and not affecting your calling minutes.

You can also buy a Skype phone number so anyone on a mobile phone or landline can call you through the Skype service.

Skype doesn’t offer any Canadian numbers, but it has more than 25 countries, including the U.S., where you can get a number assigned to your Skype account.

Your friends in that country will then have a local number to call so they do not incur long-distance charges.

The list of countries is posted on skype.com under features/all features/online-number.

The cost is about $60 for a year or $30 with a low-cost subscription package, which is cheaper than most monthly phone bills.

Skype isn’t the only Internet service for phone calls.

Google recently launched its Google Voice service, which lets anyone in the U.S. call a landline for free.

It’s not yet available in Canada, but could be a good alternative when it is.

Fring.com is an Internet voice-call service for smart phones and provides similar rates to Skype.

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